El 10 de marzo de 2000 el índice tecnológico NASDAQ llegó a un máximo de 5.048 puntos. Acto seguido, se desplomó vertiginosamente para perder el 80% de su valor en pocas semanas. Miles de millones de dólares invertidos en proyectos de internet se desvanecieron. Fue la llamada burbuja “puntocom”. El índice no se recuperó hasta 12 años más tarde. En diciembre de 2021 alcanzó un nuevo máximo, rozando los 16.000 puntos. Pero desde entonces ha vuelto a caer un 30%. Hay señales de alarma: las empresas “tecnológicas” han despedido a más de 85.000 empleados.
Sneaky robots made Austrian bees talk to Swiss fish, a Japanese and Russian team revived a muscle cell from a woolly mammoth that died 28,000 years ago, and a California Institute of Technology team has a design for spaceships powered by a light beam. This week’s column is truly illuminating.
A diverse range of breakthrough technologies, including batteries capable of providing power to whole villages, “socially aware” artificial intelligence and new generation solar panels, could soon be playing a role in tackling the world’s most pressing challenges, according to a list published by the World Economic Forum.
It’s been an exciting week for brains and biology. Scientists in Oregon have used a combination of software and brain imaging to read the human mind, their colleagues in England developed a “bio-ink” that can be used to 3-D print living tissue, and a neuroscientist in Canada found a way to evoke and erase memories. Welcome to a brave new world. Read on!
This week we learned about the discovery of a cosmic voyager as large as a football field that’s been keeping Earth company for at least 100 years, vast ancient cities hidden in the Cambodian jungle and Elon Musk’s desire to prevent an artificial superintelligence from turning him into its pet.
We’ve had the data cloud for some time — now comes data slime. We learned this week that scientists at Harvard were able to store data in Escherichia coli bacteria. Elsewhere, researchers found a second layer of information hidden inside DNA, and Microsoft data scientists used online search logs to detect pancreatic cancer in some cases even before medical diagnosis.
This week we learned about an ingestible origami robot that can remotely operate on a patient’s stomach, wireless ear buds that could soon translate a conversation in a foreign language and a new way to evolve supermaterials in the cloud. Take a look.
Britain’s ARM Holdings, the provider of technology for the iPhone, has bolstered its exposure to the developing market of embedded computer vision with the purchase of Apical for $350 million, it said on Wednesday.
Embedded computer vision involves the use of digital processing and algorithms to interpret meaning from images or video – allowing devices to understand their environment through visual means.
Cambridge-based ARM said the acquisition of Apical would accelerate its growth into new markets such as connected vehicles, robotics, security systems as well as industrial and retail applications.
It said it would also extend ARM’s product portfolio in existing markets such as smartphones and cameras.
If you’ve recently traveled overseas on a Boeing 777 plane, it’s quite likely that a pair of massive GE90 jet engines powered your ride. More powerful than the rocket that took the first American astronaut, Alan Shepard, into space, the engines are representative of the complex machines that GE has been producing for more than a century. But they also show how GE is connecting physical products with software and making them better. “Manufacturing is not a fixed process,” says Christine Furstoss, vice president and technical director for manufacturing and materials at GE Global Research.
This week we learned about a subsea dig into the massive crater left behind by the asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs 66 million years ago, mice that took a two-week vacation aboard the Space Shuttle Atlantis and returned to Earth with damaged livers, and a cell that broke one of the most basic laws of biology. Take a look.
